8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight

Eye-opening research by Christopher Soghoian on government surveillance requests received by ISPs and phone companies in the U.S.:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers’ (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

(You may recall Soghoian’s name from his Northwest Airlines boarding pass generator three years ago.)

★ Wednesday, 2 December 2009